Earnings Call Webcasts & Investor Relations Events: Best Practices

With thousands of companies from a wide variety of industries competing in the same marketplace, it’s essential that a company’s earnings call stands out to stakeholders. And because stakeholders can spread the word on a company’s earnings performance and financial forecast to potential investors, earnings calls are also an opportunity for a company to widen its audience and expand its investors.

To rise above the competition, companies should consider the expectations of their audience. A 2016 NIRI report revealed that 70 percent of respondents who held earnings calls used webcasting.

Creating an engaging, informative webcasting earnings call is essential. Here’s how:

1. Simplify Your Stakeholders’ Research Process: Many investors are at their most active during earnings seasons; tuning into earnings calls and reading transcripts from multiple companies can happen in a single day. It’s crucial, therefore, to be engaging and capture an audience’s attention for the entirety of the call.
   
   By providing access to vital company information, you are meeting an important stakeholder need of easily researching a potential company — whether to inform an investment decision or facilitate a discussion with other investors.
   
   The good news: It’s easy for companies to share information with their audience thanks to innovations in earnings call and webcasting technology. Many corporate communications teams use investor presentations, real-time stock quotes and the capability to look at historic data and transcripts from previous quarter’s earnings calls to accomplish this.
2. Be Prepared for Anything: Ensuring 24/7 support is in place from either the company’s in-house team or webcasting provider is important. Anything can happen during an earnings event; and a small mistake could tarnish a potential investor’s perspective on company performance. Even one person designated to solve problems that arise in real time sets a company up for a successful earnings event.
   
   Similarly, the company’s CEO and CFO responsible for leading the call should be prepared for any potential investor question. Preparedness builds transparency, which should be the main goal of any successful quarterly earnings call.
3. Help Spread the Word: While there was once a time when social media existed outside the realm of investor relations, it is now the new normal in earnings calls. Twitter, for example, allows investors to efficiently communicate about companies using their ticker symbol so other investors researching the company can easily glean investor sentiment without having to dial into the earnings call itself.
   
   Integrating social media allows investors to easily share key insights with the financial community and media while listening to the call.
4. Measure Success: Since earnings calls are held once a quarter, it means that corporate communications teams know just how much time they have before their next earnings event. Post-call evaluation should be incorporated into the process of planning earnings calls.
   
   Most webcasting and earnings call packages come with built-in insights and analytics, including metrics like time spent on call, number of listeners, audience segmentation and more. This information is vital to understanding not only the audience that dialed into the event, but also what benchmarks were most successful and which need improvement.

Have more questions about how to plan your next earnings event? Read our blog with a step-by-step guide to planning a successful earnings event now.